


count to three and

by addandsubtract



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Fake Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re dead,” Arthur says, voice flat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	count to three and

**Author's Note:**

> started from [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/9742.html?thread=19609614#t19609614) on [inception_kink](http://inception_kink.livejournal.com), but almost immediately took a step to the left and stayed there. the document is literally titled _SELF INDULGENCE!!!!!_ , so. do with that what you will.

Arthur is packing up his files, organizing them alphabetically. The job is over, and he’s preparing to slide them into one of the portable file cabinets in the back. He rarely takes the files out again once he’s finished with them, but he likes to have the option open. In case he has to cross-reference.

Ariadne and Yusuf have gone home, and the forger, Carter, split with his part of the cash the day before. Everything is calm, and quiet, and Arthur can hear the inside of his head again.

He doesn’t like it very much.

He sets the files down on his desk and runs his hands through his hair. He’s got another job lined up, but it doesn’t start for two days. Ariadne has been looking at him like she’s worried, but she’ll still work with him, if only because she wants to keep an eye on him. It’s been like that, for the most part, for the last three years.

Someone is walking across the main floor of the warehouse, footsteps quiet, but not disguised. Male, probably, and quick. Confident. Arthur looks up, and reaches for the gun stowed in the top drawer of his desk.

“Hello, darling.”

Arthur freezes. Eames is standing in the doorway. His hair is a little longer, and he’s a little thinner. He’s been dead for three years. He leans like he’s been here before, to this particular warehouse, as if they haven’t changed locale more than once since he died. He’s smiling, a little, and Arthur waits for it to turn into a smirk, but it doesn’t. He looks older, but not in an easily definable way.

“You’re dead,” Arthur says, voice flat.

“I’ve missed you,” Eames says, as if that’s apropos of anything. As if it’s at all appropriate. As if _that’s_ what Arthur wants to hear.

“Fuck you,” Arthur says, and almost immediately wants to take it back. “What happened to you?” he adds. He’s not expecting an answer, and he doesn’t get one. Eames just smiles.

“Want to get a drink?” Eames asks, instead. Arthur doesn’t. He says yes anyway.

 

Arthur watched Eames get shot. The two of them had just finished a small job in Mumbai. It had gone well, no snags, so Arthur hadn’t been expecting the gunshots that exploded through the window of the abandoned auto shop they’d been using as headquarters. He hadn’t been expecting the _oof_ that Eames made, not until he turned around and saw Eames kneeling on the dirty floor. Gutshot, on the right side, and Arthur had watched the blood spread and almost, inconceivably, grabbed for his totem. Instead, he’d dragged Eames behind one of the desks, pressed his hands to the wound, and called for an ambulance.

The doctor, a tall, reedy man with smooth dark skin, broke the news to Arthur less than six hours later.

“I am sorry,” he’d said in lightly accented English. “By the time he arrived here there was nothing we could do.”

Arthur had balled his hands into fists and pressed them tight against his thighs. He’d gone back to the flat they’d been sharing, then, and had carefully packed Eames’ clothes, and then his own. He took a shower. He rolled his die eight times in quick succession and didn’t wince when it came up the same every time.

Arthur supposes that he never saw the body. He watched the body bag sent off to the crematorium before he left for the airport, but he hadn’t been thinking critically at the time. There are plenty of ways to fake a death, and Arthur hadn’t even considered the possibility. An obvious oversight.

 

Eames orders a dirty martini, and Arthur orders a glass of water. The bar is dim, but toward the classy end of the spectrum. The tables are clean, the music is demure, and no one is even talking loudly. Arthur refuses to be the one to speak first. He’s already made the mistake of asking for an explanation once, and he won’t do it again.

“You look good,” Eames says, finally, and Arthur laughs. It’s a bitter thing, small and twisted. He looks at his hands on the tabletop and resolves not to pull out his gun and shoot Eames in the face. Or in the gut.

“I’m glad,” Arthur says. He adds, somewhat petty, “You look tired.”

Eames chuckles, and Arthur looks up at his face. He’s biting into his bottom lip, and Arthur’s always been aware of his own weaknesses, but he’d thought he’d gotten over this one. Apparently not.

“Still blunt as always, I see.” Eames drains his martini and pushes the empty glass to the edge of the table. Arthur can see a few of the long, thin scars that snake up his left arm. He wonders if the bullet in his stomach left a mark.

He hopes so.

“Three years hasn’t changed much,” Arthur says. _Except that you died,_ he doesn’t say. He shakes his head. “What was it that you wanted, Eames?”

Eames eyes go wide for half a second, and then he schools his face. He smiles that familiar Eames smile, and Arthur wonders what’s going on behind it. He rarely knows, but at least he’s self-aware enough to acknowledge this.

“You’ve just finished a job. With Cobb retired, you’re the one to talk to. I have an offer for you.”

It’s a lie, and Arthur knows it. Eames probably even knows that he knows it. This doesn’t stop Arthur from saying no.

 

“How much did you have to pay to get that doctor to lie to me?” Arthur asks, before he leaves. He’s standing next to the table with his fingernails biting into the skin of his palms. Eames is leaning back in his chair, tie loosened around his neck.

“Not an unreasonable amount, surprisingly,” Eames says. His grin is insincere. There is something he’s not saying, and Arthur wants to know what it is.

 

The doctor’s name is Jonathan Naeem, and he’s still practicing at the Lilavati hospital and research center in Mumbai. If it comes down to it, Arthur will call him directly, but he’ll avoid it if at all possible. He knows five of Eames’ aliases, but there are more that he doesn’t. William Frances comes up clean, followed by August Moore, and John Anderson. Arthur isn’t optimistic about the other two.

Ariadne finds him sitting at his desk, computer open to a blank tab, blinking cursor in the address box. He’s leaning back in his chair, hands steepled in front of his face.

“Have you been here all night?” There’s worry in her voice, but not caution. She’s guessed that he’s had reason to stay behind researching – a lead, or the job.

Arthur shakes his head. “No, not all night.” He hasn’t slept, though. She’ll assume that he has, and therefore won’t pry just yet.

“Okay,” she says. She’s peering over his shoulder, trying to make sense of the mess – several open files on Eames’ other known associates, and his ties to the British government. The post-its with haphazard bullet lists stuck in a careful line along the edge of the desk. Arthur’s laptop, five tabs open to research archives, and the blank tab waiting to be directed. “What’re you looking for?”

She sounds wary, now. She knows him well enough to know that this is first phase research, the kind he does before deciding whether or not to take a job. She also knows enough about Eames to makes sense of half of the information spread in front of Arthur.

Arthur doesn’t sigh, though he wants to. He doesn’t wince, or roll his eyes, or bite his lip. “Eames is alive,” he says, like ripping off a scab.

“Alive?” Her face is the picture of surprise, wide eyes and slightly open mouth. Arthur can’t help but be glad, glad that he’s not the only one left out of the loop. Ariadne isn’t a very good actor. It takes her a few moments to collect herself, and then her face smoothes out into a bland expression that usually only hides one thing – anger.

“Don’t,” Arthur says, though he can’t stop her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” she says, but she doesn’t press. Instead, she pulls up a chair. “What’ve you got so far?”

 

Arthur wonders, sometimes, if things would have been any different had they actually fucked. They danced around it a few times, but without any follow-through. It’s not as if it was all Arthur’s fault, either. In Athens Eames had gotten so far as to actually touch Arthur’s face. Their hotel was perched right over the ocean, and Arthur can remember seeing the blue of the sky, and of the sea, and of the slim ring around Eames’ dilated pupils, the open window just beyond Eames’ left shoulder. He can remember the way his breath had caught in his throat, and how he’d carefully not leaned in.

“Not now,” Eames had said, fingertips whisper soft. “After the job.”

Of course, Eames was already gone when Arthur finished tying up loose ends. It was Eames who pulled away is Moscow, and in Liberia. Arthur almost pushed, once, in Buenos Aires, but he’d only managed to knock on Eames’ hotel room door with a bottle of wine. When Eames had opened it, Arthur had looked at his pursed lips, at the slice of skin visible through the open collar of his shirt, and had immediately started talking logistics for the Cruz job.

They’ve never fucked, and most of the time, Arthur pretends that he never wanted to.

 

Arthur gets a text from Eames at 6:12, while Ariadne is out fetching them Thai for dinner. Arthur’s too paranoid, cautious, to think it a coincidence.

 _9:15, 12 bond st, dress casual_

Arthur almost deletes it out of spite, but can’t quite manage to. He’s too curious, and frustrated. He’s never wanted to want Eames, and he’s never been able to stop, either. Not even Eames being dead had changed that.

A quick search tells Arthur that the address is in a residential block in NoHo. He can only guess that Eames has a apartment there, or that the destination is somewhere else altogether. He supposes that it doesn’t really matter.

 

“You showed.” Eames appears genuinely surprised, but he isn’t. His hands are in the pockets of his overcoat, and he’s leaning against the window storefront of what appears to be a perfume shop. He’s sucking on the inside of his lip. He’s acting.

“I’m curious,” Arthur says, and it’s true, though much less so now than when he got the text three hours ago. The research has told him everything he needed to know.

“By now, I’m sure, you’ve found little information on my whereabouts.” Eames says it like a question, even though it’s not one. He smiles, and Arthur can’t decide if he wants to punch him right in the mouth, or walk away, or kiss him. Mostly, he wants to take Eames apart and find out which parts of him are sincere and which are lies constructed to make Arthur feel wanted. Which parts of him hadn’t wanted to lie at all.

“I only have two questions for you,” Arthur says. He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his coat, and wishes he’d zipped the collar up all the way.

“Ah,” Eames says. He pushes himself away from the wall. “Why don’t you come inside?”

 

When Arthur got back to Paris, he’d packed up his flat into six neat boxes, put them into storage, and locked up with just a duffle on his shoulder. He’d left a note for Ariadne at the warehouse that he was leaving for Marseilles. From there, he’d gone on to Reims, then to Madrid, and then to Barcelona, never staying longer than a month in any place. He took a few jobs, did a lot of reading, and a lot of sketching. Ariadne caught up with him in Barcelona. He’d opened the door to his flat, and she’d been looking at her watch, mouth turned down. His first thought was that maybe he should get out of Europe altogether.

He’d sighed, and she’d raised her eyebrows at him.

“What do you think of New York?” he asked, and watched her process his words.

“I’ve never been there,” she’d said. She’d grown up in Palo Alto, and had gone to university in Paris – he supposes that he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Why?”

“Let’s go,” he’d said, instead. He’d booked their flight on the way to the airport. She hadn’t asked him for any justification whatsoever, and he’d never been more grateful. He hadn’t had any.

 

Eames pours two glasses of wine, but Arthur just smells his and sets it back on the square table in Eames’ living room. The apartment is closer to a loft, with high ceilings and exposed brick, pipes running across width of room and disappearing into the walls. Eames’ bed is on a platform above the rest furniture, and there’s a kitchen off to one side. There are two sweaters on the floor by the front door, and an open book face down on the couch by the far window. Eames has been living here awhile.

“You said you had two questions.” Eames is leaning back in his chair, pretending that he’s relaxed. He’s not, though.

“Yes,” Arthur says. “Black ops, or the mob?” Either is possible, given Eames’ military background, and his less than savory contacts, but they are the only two options when encountering an information block like the one Arthur found three hours ago. It’s like Eames had been completely erased.

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Eames says, and he doesn’t even smile. This means the former, if only because mobsters don’t bother to make you swear. They assume you know what’s best for you.

“Ah,” Arthur says. “Do you have a scar?”

“Is that the second question?” Eames sits up in his seat, but doesn’t lean in. He’s surprised, even though it doesn’t show on his face.

“Yes.”

“Two,” Eames says, then. “Entrance and exit wounds.”

Arthur nods, and pushes his still untouched glass over to Eames, standing. “Thank you,” he says, and pulls his jacket from the back of his chair, sliding it on.

“You’re just going to leave?”

“I have a flight in the morning, so, yes. I’m just going to leave.”

Arthur doesn’t look over his shoulder, but he pulls the door to Eames’ loft closed behind him and listens to it click.

 

Ariadne and Arthur fly to Bogota early the next morning. Their contact is meeting them at El Dorado International Airport, and chauffeuring them to the job site. The job itself is a land dispute, one involving a will and a dying matriarch. The whole tale is complicated enough to make for a thrilling novel, and Arthur’s happy for the distraction.

Ariadne hasn’t said anything to him, yet, but he supposes that it’s just a matter of time.

Arthur is leaning back in his seat, just about to turn off his cell phone, when he gets a text.

 _safe flight_ , it says, from a 917 number. New York area code. It’s from Eames, obviously. Arthur deletes it without saving the number.

 

The Bogota job goes off without a hitch. It’s a long one, one that takes them a few weeks to prepare for, and another to carry out. By the time they finish it, they’ve been in Colombia for almost a month. Arthur can see it in the new tan on his skin, and that he hasn’t worn a suit jacket in weeks, his one capitulation to the heat.

He’s packing up the files into his briefcase, and mentally searching through job offers. He may not be working with Cobb anymore, but there are plenty of people who have heard about the inception job. It’s brought them enough clout to never have to worry about work again.

“Don’t you think it’s time you dealt with Eames?” Ariadne is spinning in one of the chairs left in their workspace. The family’s accommodations had been more than adequate for the two of them.

“Why?” Arthur asks. He’s slightly surprised it’s taken her this long. She is much more forgiving than he is.

Ariadne shrugs. “If nothing else, he’s an asset to have on a team. But mostly in the hopes that you’ll stop working yourself into the ground.”

Arthur chuckles, and snaps the flap of his briefcase closed. “I have no desire to work with him.”

“Of course not,” Ariadne says with an indelicate snort. “That would involve admitting several things you wish to pretend are entirely untrue.”

Arthur doesn’t respond directly. “Let’s go,” he says. Ariadne sighs, and follows him out of the door.

 

They take a job in Rome, and then one in Sicily, and Arthur decides to take a few weeks off to travel around Italy. He’s never managed to make it to Venice, though he’s always meant to, and his context for most of the major cities – Rome, Florence, Milan – is just what he’s seen while working there.

“I think this is a good thing,” Ariadne says, when he leaves her at the terminal in the Rome Leonardo Di Vinci Airport. “Call me when you’re back in the States.”

“Will do,” he says. He gives her a hug, and she laughs against his neck.

“Stop being petty,” she says. “Call Eames.”

Arthur just smiles, and takes step back.

“Safe flight,” he says.

 

He spends three days in Rome, one exploring the Vatican, and the other two wandering the city, going into churches. There are a lot of them. The streets are just as dirty as he remembers them to be, and on the morning of the fourth day, he takes the train to Venice. It leaves at 9 PM, and takes almost seven hours. He sleeps half of the way there, and spends the rest idly staring out of the window.

From the window of his hotel he can see right out onto the canals. The city is like a living museum – a moment in time captured physically. It’s hard not to get lost, but there’s only so far to go. The city is not growing at all, and not changing. Beautiful, and stagnant.

Arthur spends almost seven hours in the Guggenheim, wandering through the rooms where she’d lived. He sits on the back deck next to Marini’s _The Angel of the City_ , watching the boats laze their way past.

 _Goddamn it_ , he thinks.

 

It’s stubbornness that gets Arthur to Milan. It rains the whole way there, and for the first two days. He sits in his hotel and drinks coffee and looks out the window. He sketches the cityscape, drawing the facades of the shops on the ground level. It’s more urban than Rome, but Arthur doesn’t mind. He buys an umbrella, and spends the second rainy day window-shopping.

On the morning of the third day, the sky is still overcast, but the rain has tapered off. Arthur drinks his second latte of the day in a café down the street from the hotel, and pulls out a scrap of paper with Eames’ number on it. One quick web search had done it. Eames obviously wants to be found.

 _meet me in london_ , he types into the text box. _in two days. you know where._ He sends it, and then he turns off his phone.

 

Arthur sits on the top of the footpath stairs, just at the end of the Millennium Bridge, across the Thames from the Tate Modern. Three years ago, Eames had joked that if they ever had to have a reunion befitting of a romantic comedy, he’d want it to happen on the Millennium Bridge. Arthur hadn’t laughed, at the time, but he hadn’t thought it would come in handy, either.

Arthur’s hands itch for his sketchbook, but he’s left in behind intentionally. He still doesn’t see Eames’ approach.

“You remembered, then,” Eames says, and Arthur looks up. He’s wearing a ripped jumper, one of the ones Arthur saw on the floor of his New York apartment a month and a half ago.

“Obviously,” he says. He pauses for a moment, then adds, “Things were less complicated when you were dead.”

“I’d imagine so,” Eames says, and leans back on his heels, stuffing his hands into the front pocket of his jumper. “Are you still angry with me?”

“Yes.” Arthur shrugs. “But that doesn’t help much, does it?”

“I suppose not.” Eames is noncommittal, wary. Arthur supposes that he has the right to be.

“I’ll be more careful, next time,” Arthur says. Next time, he won’t be sure until he touches Eames’ corpse. Arthur stands, and Eames takes a step back to give him room, but he’s still close enough that Arthur can feel the heat from his body.

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” Eames says, and even though he shrugs with it, his voice is as serious as Arthur’s ever heard it.

“Okay.” It’s only then that Arthur lets himself reach out, and brush his hand over the curve of Eames’ cheek. He can feel Eames suck in a quick breath. Arthur remembers the open window, and the sky, and how dark Eames’ pupils had been inside the blue of his iris, and he thinks this time will be different. He will make sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> (for those of you who are curious - [The Angel of the City (L'angelo della città), by Marino Marini](http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/collections/artisti/dettagli/opere_dett.php?id_art=107&id_opera=212&page=))


End file.
